Rep. Dan Flynn

Tis the season for prefiling bills for the upcoming session of the Texas Legislature, and Van Republican Dan Flynn has filed a measure that would allow teachers in Texas public schools to post copies of The 10 Commandments on their classroom walls. (For those of you who don’t know, Van is a very small little town about 70 miles east Dallas on I-20. It is in Van Zandt County, for which Canton is the county seat. I worked there years and years ago as editor of the town’s weekly newspaper, The Van Progress.)

Flynn’s bill says that school board trustees may not stop copies of the commandments from being posted in “prominent” locations in classrooms, according to a story in the Sunday issue of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Flynn also says the measure is a “patriotic exercise” intended to teach students about history and principles.

(Funny, I see it as an unconstititutional effort to impose specific religious views.)

Flynn told the Star-Telegram:

“This is necessary to protect teachers who have the desire to establish that the country’s historical background is based on Judeo-Christian traditions. This might be a reassuring step to the people that we are wanting to maintain and hold on to those historical findings of how our country was founded. And anything that helps build the morals of our young people would be helpful. For too long, we’ve forsaken what our Judeo-Christian heritage has been. Our rights do come from God, not from government.”

Oh, and Flynn was apparently distressed that school officials are not allowed to publicly pray for students athletes before school sports events.

Of course, there have been numerous court cases involving the Ten Commandments on public property and in government buildings. And a in a lot of those cases, the courts have said it isn’t allowed. Although, as the Star-Telegram notes, there was a case just five years ago in which the Supreme Court said a granite monument with the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol is not unconstitutional because it didn’t mean that Texas government officials were promoting religion.

Flynn said his bill has gotten support among conservatives, but acknowledges that if it passes the Legislature it is likely to face legal challenges.

3 Comments

Trevi Solano
on November 24, 2010 at 1:05 pm

I do believe children can always use morality lesson, but who decides what is moral?
If we examine the history of the United States…attempted genocide of Native Americans, slavery, women had no rights, only white males that were property owners and paid taxes could vote, hmmm, Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were rejected from the original Puritan chuch for their religious views, so who decides what was moral about the History of our United States? Oh yes, and landgrabbing with excuses for not paying for rich land. I often wonder what the morals of the United States would be if the English, had actually respected Native American Land, namely the Cherokee sitting on extremely profitable soil, if slaves had been paid and their human rights respected, if women hadn’t been treated as 2nd class citizens, where would the power be today and what kind of laws would we have? Oh yes, back to our Judeo-Christian heritage, and our rights coming from God and not our government.

I guess this guy doesn’t really KNOW anything about the US Constitution – only HIS interpretation of it. The founders of the Constitution, the fathers of our Country, were mostly deists. They would not WANT the 10 commandments, nor children or adults forced to pray (or listen to others pray) anywhere near a school. They firmly believed in the separation of church & state because they KNEW how destructive and polarizing some religions can be.